Alabama
Tennessee football will be chasing different teams for SEC supremacy | Adams
After the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma for the 2024 football season, I split the conference in half for evaluation purposes.
My top half: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Texas A&M.
These teams comprised my bottom half: Arkansas, Auburn, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Vanderbilt.
Track records and NIL support factored into my rankings. The latter is obviously a challenge, because NIL money isn’t well documented. So, my rankings were an educated guess at best.
I singled out Texas, Texas A&M, and LSU because of their obvious NIL resources. All three are loaded. Tennessee probably has as much NIL power as any other SEC program.
The Vols will play Texas, Texas A&M, and LSU this season. So, they will face a greater challenge than in 2024 and 2025 when the SEC’s interim schedules were in place.
But projecting future success and failure in the NIL era of SEC football is hardly an exact science. And I’m already questioning my preliminary rankings. Four schools stick out: Oklahoma, Ole Miss, Missouri, and Vanderbilt
Oklahoma went 6-7 (2-6 in the SEC) in 2024 but made the College Football Playoff last season, only to lose in the first round to Alabama. That’s not what I expected from one of college football’s most prestigious programs.
Perhaps, the Sooners don’t have as much NIL money as the SEC’s most affluent members. Now, I’m wondering if they even can keep up with in-state rival Oklahoma State, which has been on a spending spree in multiple sports, including football.
Ole Miss has been a surprise in a good way. Former coach Lane Kiffin became the “Portal King” because of his relentless recruiting of highly touted transfers. But he couldn’t accomplish as much just on his track record or name recognition. He needed money.
And the Rebels provided it, which helps explain how they went 34-7 from 2023 through 2025.
Missouri has fared better than expected. The Tigers are 29-10 for the past three seasons. I thought there was a better chance of coach Eli Drinkwitz getting fired than winning 29 of 39 games in three seasons of NIL football.
Vanderbilt’s success has been stunning, though you must wonder whether it’s sustainable. The Commodores’ 10-3 record in 2025 was mainly a testament to the play of quarterback Diego Pavia, who was the Heisman Trophy runner-up to Fernando Mendoza.
Florida and Auburn are wildcards.
The Gators were slow coming out of the NIL gate. They also have a recent history of hiring more bad coaches than good ones.
Maybe, they got it right with Jon Sumrall. And perhaps, Auburn did the same with Alex Golesh. But the Tigers were wrong about their previous two hires, Bryan Harsin and Hugh Freeze.
Texas, LSU and Texas also have missed on coaches. But they have the money to buy their way out of a bad deal.
The Aggies paid Jimbo Fisher a $77 million buyout in November 2023. LSU had to pay Brian Kelly $54 million after firing him in October 2025.
Such spending tells me Tennessee will have more difficulty long-term keeping up with Texas, Texas A&M and LSU than they will with traditional SEC powers like Georgia and Alabama.
John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com.